


When Memory Fails

by n7chelle



Series: The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crestwood, F/M, Fade Dreams, Pregnant Lavellan, Solas told the truth!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 21:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16292369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n7chelle/pseuds/n7chelle
Summary: Roiya brings Solas to the site of a painful memory in order to make new, better ones in their place.





	When Memory Fails

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: [this image](https://imgur.com/Gd0ojpx).

Roiya's image of the pond in Crestwood is imperfect.

The memory is clouded, understandably, by the pain that still lingers over what transpired there. She expects at least some of that to be reflected as she focuses on that night—the good  _and_ the bad—and gives it free reign to reform in the Fade. The landscape around her, a vague imitation of their bedchamber at Skyhold, shifts abruptly sideways. She blinks dizzily, and then, rather than a melancholic shadow, she's faced with a romantically embellished  _suggestion_  of the place she'd tried to recall. Perhaps it's some incomprehensible will of the Fade, the truth of her motives plucked from her mind here in this realm where emotion and intent are as strong—if not stronger—than spoken words or actions. She needs this to be a place of healing, and perhaps a perfect recreation would only hurt them both. 

So: Instead of a broad stone archway, she stands at the mouth of a narrow passage, as if trespassing on a secret, hidden grotto. The spring trickling from between moss-covered rocks has expanded into a wide river dropoff, and the overhanging stone and flora seem somehow further away—or maybe it's that the sky is pulled closer, hanging heavy and dark overhead, luminous with stars.

Most striking, Ghilan'nain's statues are missing. She expected their absence somehow, but a pair of gilded halla, their flanks marked as the statues had been, drink silently from the pool. They bolt as Roiya approaches, a trail of glowing ripples dancing across the water's surface in the wake of their escape, and they crest the waterfall in a single, soundless leap.

It's warmer than she remembers it being that night, the spark of the Fade brushing her skin superfluous in this Fade-dreamed oasis. Her bare feet dig into the sand, reveling in the cool, slightly damp granules sliding between her toes. She'd worn shoes last time, a concession to the sharp, gravelly ground all over Crestwood. Fireflies flutter between her legs and out over the still, moonlit surface of the pool. The river's current has slowed to a crawl, and the waterfalls are like silvery-white threads draped over mossy stone, caught in the moment between one breath and the next. 

"Why here,  _vhenan_?" Solas says softly, joining her at the water's edge. Gone is his soft woolen tunic. The emerald green vest beneath leaves his arms uncovered for once, and he stands like a man facing a battlefield unarmored, clearly discomfited by the familiar surroundings. Roiya snags his fingers with her own for a moment. 

"This place. Or, the place like it that we both remember...it was beautiful. I remember thinking that I never wanted to forget whatever happened between us that night." She lets him go, bends to dip her hands in the water, pushing her fingers into the sand. "And I won't. Of course I won't.  _We_  won't. But." Roiya straightens, grasps Solas' hands again in both of hers, careless of the mud on her palms. As she leans up onto her toes to kiss him lightly, barely a brush of their lips, she can feel the tension radiating from him in faint tremors. "I'd rather we have  _good_  memories here." 

Her clothes fall in a pile on the sand, easily removed with two hands at her disposal. It's strange to look down and see her body flat and hardened, two-armed and whole as it remembers being, where in the waking world she knows she is still soft and round and unbalanced. There's a pulse in the center of her stomach; the echo of twin heartbeats, sleeping soundly both here and in the very pregnant belly she left behind. 

Roiya steps into the pool, trusting Solas to follow her lead, whatever his misgivings. She sweeps through the water with her left arm, marveling at the incongruity of having it again when she'd just started to adjust to living without it. The more she uses it, the more it feels foreign and unnatural. This arm doesn't belong to her anymore—and almost as soon as the thought has taken shape, the limb fades in a haze of green, drawn from her body like a spirit into a rift. She rolls the scarred stump of shoulder that remains, feeling as much as seeing the spiderweb of halted corruption stretch across the bone underneath. 

The water swells against her bare back. 

"I wish I could return it to you," Solas says. His voice is barely a whisper, layered with anguish and self-loathing. His arms fold her into his chest from behind, a cool hand cradling the remains of her shoulder. He wouldn't be so forthright with her, even now, had the honesty of the Fade not stripped him of his only defenses. There are no secrets in the shared space of their dreams, not anymore. Roiya turns in the circle of his arms, pulls him down into the hollow of her neck with her good arm. Her mouth brushes the tapered shell of his ear, and he shudders against her, sharing love without words as only the Fade could allow.


End file.
